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View SlideshowRequest to buy this photoStephanie Czekalinski | DispatchConcerned parents gather outside West High School on S. Powell Avenue after a ninth-grader stabbed another during an assembly. The injured student was in critical condition at Nationwide Children’s Hospital.

A ninth-grade orientation assembly at West High School was just ending yesterday and Mikeyla
Jackson and her classmates were looking forward to lunch. Suddenly, a student called out for the
school nurse.

He’d been cut across the neck, he shouted, and needed help, Jackson said.

Last night Tyquan Greene-Tucker, 14, was in critical condition, according to a spokeswoman at
Nationwide Children’s Hospital. He had had surgery, and police said he’s expected to survive.

Sgt. Christine Nemchev, spokeswoman for the Columbus Division of Police, said that classmate
Marcos Solis, also 14, is charged in the attack. Students say he was sitting behind Greene-Tucker
during the assembly, reached over and sliced Greene-Tucker across the throat with a lock-blade
pocket knife.

The call came into Columbus police at 11:24 a.m. Students and school-resource officers subdued
Solis until police arrived.

The attack appears to have been unprovoked, Nemchev said.

Solis, also a ninth-grader, is charged with delinquency counts of felonious assault and
possession of a dangerous weapon, police said. He was in police custody yesterday.

A search of Franklin County juvenile records showed that Solis had no previous crimes of
violence.

News of the stabbing traveled fast. Groups of worried parents gathered in the drizzle on the
sidewalk outside West High School on S. Powell Avenue in the Hilltop, waiting for answers about
what had happened and whether their kids were safe.

“It’s scary,” said Kathy Jackson, who came to the school to take 14-year-old daughter Mikeyla
home. “You don’t know if you want your kids to go back or what.”

Classes resumed yesterday afternoon, but the school was in lockdown until the end of the school
day, said Jeffrey B. Warner, communication director for the Columbus school district. That meant no
one was allowed in or out of the locked building, with the exception of parents who wanted to take
their children home.

Albert McGonigle was waiting outside the school to do just that.

McGonigle, whose three children attend West, said the school needs to beef up security.

The district said this is the first weapons-related incident this school year at West High,
which has about 900 students.

In Columbus high schools last year, students were expelled 18 times and suspended 33 times for
bringing weapons other than guns onto school grounds. There were too few incidents of guns found on
middle- and high-school students to publicly report because schools aren’t required to report small
numbers to protect student privacy.

State discipline-tracking systems rely on schools to honestly report and categorize each
suspension and expulsion. But most experts say that such data are grossly underreported.

McGonigle and other parents said they’d like to see metal detectors at West High.

District spokeswoman Jacqueline Bryant said none of the district’s schools has metal
detectors.

Police officers, however, are assigned as school-resource officers to 17 Columbus high schools.
There also are 41 security employees who oversee several schools each.

As part of its 2008 levy, Columbus promised to add more security workers. Since then, 15 have
been added.

But during a budget crunch in the spring, Columbus cut three security positions.

Columbus also is in the midst of a $5 million levy-funded project to upgrade security-camera
systems in schools. Some high schools have as many as 50 cameras that can be monitored from school
offices or the Downtown administration building.

Yesterday afternoon, some West students met their parents to go home early. Some walked in
silence and others were crying.

McGonigle said the incident left him with a lot of concerns. He was considering keeping his
children home today as well.